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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fanboy2000" data-source="post: 5328238" data-attributes="member: 19998">Good point. When I think of Dancey, I think of the now famous letter he wrote on the subject of TSR's collapse.Of course, you have to do actual market research. You have get a better sampling than people complaining on forums and usenet. But it looks like he did. We don't know everything they found out, but Dancey gives us an idea.Today, Wizard's has a kind of dichotomy. I suspect most people play in homebrew worlds, but Wizards' makes their money selling to DM's tools to make hombebrewing easy. Add to that the value of FR and Dragonlance on their own, and you have a situation where some of their most valuable assets aren't very useful to large swaths of buyers. This may explain the upswing in player focused splat books from 2e on.Generally speaking, the fewer books you print, the higher your per book cost is. The higher the book costs to print, the fewer people that may be willing to pay for that book at a price that allows you make a profit.While you are correct that guessing high will cause damage, printing in low quantities can cause damage as well. It's possible that, for some campaign settings, there is no amount Wizards could print that would turn them a profit.It might have, Dancey doesn't say.If you are right, and Planescape did turn a profit (and it would be nice to see some evidence), then Wizards had some tough choices to make. One one hand, they're getting feedback saying people don't like the setting. A lot of feedback. These people want more setting generic material. On the other hand, it's making money. They can choose one over the other, or they can try to print both. If they choose one over the other, Planescape looses because generic setting books are more profitable. If they try to do both, they may end-up doing both badly, rather than profiting from both. It's a risk. Sometimes, I think the risk is worth it. After all, today Wizard's puts out both Magic and D&D. It do so back them.They made a decision that I think was appropriate. Not because I don't like Planescape, it's the only D&D campaign setting I bought during the 2e years. It remains the only 2e product I still own. I have all the material I need to run a Planescape campaign. I would welcome more, but I don't need it. I bought those books back when I was in the Navy, and surprisingly, they've followed me around through the country. It's one of the few items from that time period I still own. As you might suspect, I don't think the current situation is an abomination. I think instead it allows people to have exposure to a wide variety of game settings without taxing the companies' resources. I find the current system elegant. Over a long period of time, I will see many game settings for the edition of D&D I currently play. This allows me to spread out my purchases over time, so I don't have to pick and choose.</blockquote>

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